Microsoft buys Minecraft for $2.5 billion, Minecraft fans freak out

Microsoft has agreed to purchase Mojang, the Swedish studio behind the incredibly popular video game “Minecraft,” for $2.5 billion. The ultra-popular brick-building game has sold more than 16 million PC copies—making it the best-selling PC game of all time—and has over 100 million registered accounts. With such a large and devoted community, fans have a lot to say about the sale, and what they’re saying isn’t particularly positive.

On Reddit, fans have taken to /r/Minecraft to express their concerns, the largest of which is that the tech behemoth Microsoft will run the game into the ground, either by mismanagement, charging for updates when they used to be free, or both.

“Well, here marks the downfall of Minecraft as we know it,” lamented /u/RCDuke. “M$ [Microsoft] is in the business to make money but not necessarily to keep gamers happy. Updates to the game will probably still come, but I’m betting it will cost us now.”

These same sentiments were expressed on Twitter:

“To continue to play Minecraft, please enter the 64 character code found on the back of your Minecraft CD box”— I Am Devloper (@iamdevloper) September 15, 2014

Microsoft’s purchase of Mojang also drew comparisons to the company’s acquisition of Rare, the video game developer responsible for some of the more popular games of the late-’90s and early-’00s. Rare was behind games like “Donkey Kong Country,” “GoldenEye,” “Killer Instinct,” and “Banjo-Kazooie.” Rare has floundered since being bought by Microsoft in 2002.

In 2006, Rare released “Viva Piñata,” a sandbox game featuring, you guessed it, piñatas

@KazHiraiCEO is a parody Twitter account pretending to be Kazuo Hirai, CEO of rival Sony

The news that game creator Markus “notch” Persson—along with the other Mojang founders—is leaving the company was also met with mixed reactions. Notch posted a short explanation of why he was leaving, explaining that the responsibility of being in charge of such a large community was too much to handle.

“In one sense, [Minecraft] belongs to Microsoft now,” he wrote. “In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.”

Despite the heartfelt letter, some fans still felt betrayed.

“What a god damn hyppocrite [sic]. He criticizes Facebook buying Oculus and gets all butthurt over it and now sells Mojang to one of the biggest dick companies out there,” wrote /u/Blonishmist748.

Microsoft has yet to disclose their plans for Minecraft and Mojang, though according to the Wall Street Journal, the company is expecting to break even on the Mojang purchase in the fiscal year of 2015.

Fidel Martinez is an editor at Fusion.net. He’s also a Texas native and a lifelong El Tri fan.